


Fight Song

by pprfaith



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Capture and Rescue, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Humor, Literally This Time, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Chosen, REENA MADE ME DO IT, Rescue Shenanigans, Timestamp, Violence, it's just silly fluff with a lot of shooting stuff okay?, look - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 22:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12592332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which John has a Bad Day, his heavy hitters are fighting like little girls and bad guys get shot a lot.(A timestamp that will make zero sense without having readMyself in You.)





	Fight Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/gifts).



> Back in March (I'm ashamed of myself) Reena Jenkins made me an Awesome Hospital Podfic Playlist and I promised her more in this 'verse as a thank you. But then I had to go and rewrite the entire 'verse first, because I'm OCD when it comes to my fic and I need to sort out my priorities.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it anyway, late as it is.

+

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard is having a bad day.

Scratch that. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard is having a Pegasus Galaxy bad day. 

They’re sort of like Earth bad days, only with a lot more mortal danger, worse headaches and the thrilling potential of getting the life literally sucked out of you. 

Okay, that’s not so much a threat right now, but the mortal danger bit applies doubly because they’re unarmed, outnumbered, split up and trapped. 

He and his team came to this planet on invitation from a people that seemed about on-par with the Genii in terms of advancement and technology, except they had better fashion sense, or so Buffy claimed. And, you know, less homicidal urges.

They sent a calling card through to Atlantis a week ago, asking for trade and ‘cultural exchanges’. Even with contact to Earth reestablished, they can’t really turn something like that down, so off they went to make first contact, especially since Rodney really wanted to know how they’d gotten this far without the Wraith culling them as a threat. 

Smiling people, a lot of gushing, into the city-like compound they went, and suddenly they were being disarmed at gunpoint, to be ransomed for some piece of technology these folk thought Atlantis had.

It doesn’t. John has pretty much all of ‘Lantis’ inventory stuck somewhere in his hindbrain these days, and what he doesn’t know, Buffy does and that thing the bad guys want? Bit fat _nope_. 

(Apparently, he also has parts of Buffy stuck in his hindbrain, because his inner sarcasm voice sounds way too much like her.)

When John’s fast talking and Rodney’s blustering turned out to be ineffective, Teyla heaved a sigh and attacked one of their guards with aggravated resignation, smashing the butt of his own weapon into his face. Ronon and Buffy, taking their cue, took off in the opposite direction while the rest of the team was subdued and shoved in a dank cell. 

That was a couple of hours ago.

The two former runners disappeared into thin air and, hopefully, are going to mount some sort of rescue. John saw their hosts take at least half a dozen weapons off each of them, so they probably have at least that much left between them. 

They’ll be fine. No reason to be worried. 

Usually.

Except – and this is where the bad day gets upgraded to Pegasus level – there’s something wrong with their brute force dream team. They’ve been giving each other the silent treatment so effectively and so coldly for the past week that even McKay noticed. Last week, Rodney managed to _walk into a tree_ because he wasn’t paying attention. But he noticed the Cold War being waged between Crazy #1 and #2. That’s how bad it is. 

Bad enough that John seriously considered benching one of them for this trip. The only reason he didn’t was that it was supposed to be an easy one. 

Live and learn. Or, well, hopefully at least live.

Teyla was the only one brave enough to ask what they fight was about, at some point. The verbal smackdown she got from Buffy made even John cringe and he’s used to Rodney You Are All Ants And I’m the Boot McKay. 

So three of his team are trapped, the other two are playing hide and seek in enemy territory while not speaking to each other and in six hours, when Atlantis will be forced to reveal that they don’t have what the Trokkens want, they’ll all be dead. 

Bad. Fucking. Day.

John’s fully prepared to sulk for another ten minutes or so before getting on to the self-rescue business (It’s that bad of a day.), when Rodney’s agitated muttering in the far corner of their cell abruptly stops. 

After all this time, John relies on the fact that a noisy Rodney is an okay Rodney. Even a screaming Rodney is alright, because it usually means he’s being extra clever under pressure. Silent Rodney? 

High alert. 

Teyla stops her examination of the heavy, bolted door and turns to their resident genius, something like alarm under the armor of calm she wears.

“Rodney?” she asks, shoulders shifting, legs bending slightly, reacting to his silence in much the same way as John – extreme caution.

The man unfolds himself from a crouch, revealing a little black gadget in the palm of his hand. “Spare comm,” he informs them without prompting. “I had it in my pocket from the last mission where Ronon broke his _again_ and I needed some spare parts from it to build that bomb and then forgot about it, so they took mine, but didn’t think to take the scrap of this one and I think I got it working again, sort of, it’s not like I have tools, or proper lighting in here, or anything approaching working conditions, also, there are parts missing, like I said, I cannibalized it, but it should, if we’re lucky, be able to receive and – “

He pushes the little button.

Static. 

Both Teyla and John shift closer, both to hide the communicator from easy view – not that they even have guards, the cell door could probably withstand a nuclear blast, there’s no need – and to hear better. 

Rodney shakes his hand as if that might produce sound (how unscientific), and after a long minute of nothing but silence, only broken once – 

“Hello, can anyone hear us? Ronon? Slayer?”

“I said receiving only, Sheppard, are you listening to me?”

\- the device crackles sharply after another prod from Rodney and then dissolves into the sound of footsteps and sharp breathing. On ART-1 it’s SOP to switch all devices to permanent transmission when they’re separated. Most of the other teams, especially the ones made up of original expedition members, do the same.

It makes them no more vulnerable to being tracked, because their comms send out signals even when inactive, but they’ve dealt with enough half-dead communication disasters by now to appreciate the ability to hear your teammates are still alive. Earth tried to make a thing out of it, when they found out, because they were supposed to go black-out in situations like these, but the Lanteans smiled and ignored them. Knowing that their people are still alive, still fighting, is worth more out here than just about anything else.

The newbies get used to how things are run out here, or they go back home. That’s all there is to it. Atlantis isn’t Earth and the expedition was cut off too long to cling to any notions that it is. In Pegasus, things work differently. Now, so do they. 

“Here,” Buffy hisses, sharply and a moment later, a door slams shut. Ronon curses creatively as he catches his breath and then can be heard demanding, “Let me see.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding, you’re not fine, stop being an idiot,” he chides sharply, causing her to huff. 

“Oh, suddenly you give a damn?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” John makes a mental note to have a stern conversation about teaching the natives how to swear with his marines because while most of Ronon’s words have the underlying static that means the gate is translating them, the ‘fuck’ definitely doesn’t. 

Later. After they all get out alive. 

“I’m sorry, did I stutter?” Buffy hisses venomously even as they hear the sound of fabric ripping and a pained grunt. “You haven’t so much as looked at me in the past week, don’t pretend to be all concerned now!”

“Hold this,” Ronon snaps. “Me? Woman, you’re the one who’s been bunking with Cadman!”

“Because you’re a dick!”

“And you’re a bitch,” he snarls back. The sound of his blaster going off followed immediately by a sharp hiss of something singed and a muffled scream. Then a slap.

“You did not just do that!” Buffy pants, obviously in more pain than before.

“It was bleeding too much, even you can’t heal that fast and you were leaving a trail.”

“Fuck you.”

Buffy, too, it seems, picked up a bit too much from John’s marines. She didn’t swear this much when she joined them. Rodney makes a disgusted little sound at the back of his throat. “Did he just-?”

“Cauterize whatever wound she has with the hot end of his blaster?” John finishes.

“Yes,” Teyla confirms, with a slight wince of sympathy. “Crude, but effective.”

And then Buffy slapped him for it, by the sound of it. 

“Those two terrify me,” Rodney admits in a weak whimper. 

Before John can poke fun at him (not that he doesn’t have a certain _healthy respect_ for anyone stupid enough to attack a Wraith barehanded), Buffy asks, “Hear that?”

“Mhm.”

“Coming closer.”

“Up?”

“Go.”

Metal against metal – a grate being moved? – and then more sounds of movement and distant voices. 

Then, “Let me-“

“You’re injured.”

“I’ve had worse, stop being a jerk.”

“I thought I was a dick.”

“You are. Now get down there.”

A growl. Two thumps. At a guess, they’re leaving the vents and dropping into another room.

“What do you have?”

“Four knives, cable ties, fuses, but no detonators, comm, you?” John makes another mental note to separate Buffy and Cadman during down time, because if she’s started carrying around bomb parts for supposedly peaceful missions, he fears for ‘Lantis’ structural integrity. 

“Three knives, blaster, comm, hand grenade.”

A beat of silence. Teyla blinks. 

Rodney grimaces. “Do I want to know where he hid that?”

“Do I want to know where you hid that?”

“No.”

More silence.

“Split up, find the others, get out?”

“So eager to get rid of me already?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“As if you don’t know!”

“Is it me, or are they worse than a bunch of twelve-year-olds in a snit?” Rodney asks, shifting to get into a more comfortable position without taking his eyes off the comm, blissfully unaware of the irony coming out of his mouth. If he incidentally leans his back against John’s shins, well, Teyla isn’t going to ask. Or tell. 

“It’s not you,” John murmurs back, gently jostling one of his legs. Rodney nudges back. They really need to figure out what’s going on with those two. And fix it. Before it gets them all killed. Or worse, split up. It’s not like Elizabeth isn’t perfectly aware of the friction, too, and she has the necessary distance to split them up. John knows full well that she doesn’t much like Buffy on their team anyway. She wants her on another team, for ‘even distribution of resources’. All John hears when they rehash that particular argument is ‘I don’t like her and she doesn’t listen to me’. 

He likes Elizabeth, but her political maneuvering gets on his nerves at times. 

Meanwhile, the argument about splitting up continues, until Ronon bites out. “We stay together.”

“Fine. Have it your way. Caveman.”

John doesn’t need to be present to see the glares they’re sending each other. 

“Can’t go blind. Too big.”

“Surveillance or blue prints,” the slayer agrees, still sounding stiff. 

“Or a guide.”

“Will be missed.”

“Surveillance room will be noticed, too, if we take it out.”

A sigh. A pause. A door opening, a quick scuffle and the sound of a body landing on hard ground. The door shut again. “There. You get the information out of him, I’m checking these boxes for something useful.”

Apparently, Buffy just grabbed a random passerby from the hallway and gave him to Ronon. Like a cat offering dead mice, except John doesn’t think she’s trying to be nice. But then, who knows with those two. They consider beating the snot out of each other foreplay and flirt by throwing Wraith at each other in battle.

+

Forty-five minutes later, Ronon has slapped, threatened and menaced every bit of information he could out of the hapless janitor Buffy nabbed him. 

“Done?” Buffy eventually drawls, sounding bored. Twenty minutes ago, Teyla helpfully identified the thumping noise in the background as someone repetitively stabbing a knife into a hard surface and pulling it back out. Apparently, Buffy’s cranked up her inner psycho.

The janitor started spilling his guts shortly thereafter, though, so at least it served a purpose. 

Ronon sighs. “Done,” he agrees, almost sounding sad. 

They then truss their hostage up with their cable ties and store him somewhere he will be found. Eventually. 

They proceed to evade the units roaming the complex in search of them for another two hours, setting up various distractions, apparently with the chemicals Buffy scrounged from the boxes in the storage room they dropped into and the fuses she carried with her.

Rodney makes a few thoughtful noises about their teammate’s apparent skill with on-the-fly chemicals and bomb-making and John strikes separating Buffy and Cadman in favor of just keeping both of them the hell away from Rodney. For all their sakes. Teyla looks mildly impressed, even as she steers Rodney expertly away from the idea of chemical weaponry brewing in that big brain of his. 

“I’m just saying, with enough glycerin-“

“No.”

“But-“

“No.”

Eventually, though, the two former runners’ luck is bound to run out and they all know it. 

They don’t know how, can’t tell form sound alone, but somehow, the duo get cornered by a patrol. 

“Dead end, shit,” Buffy growls.

“Up?” Ronon asks.

“No time.”

A grunt is his only response. Weapons are drawn. Doors are tried, something gets kicked. There’s panting as they run, shouts as the soldiers close in, knowing the complex better than the intruders.

A hiss. “Here, inside, move, move, move.”

A door slams, something heavy gets shoved. Door blocked, if John had to guess.

“Shit! Where the hell are we?”

“Storage?”

Their voices sound different now.

“Big room,” Rodney supplies. “They must be somewhere huge!”

At the same time, Ronon grunts. “Fantastic. Hide and fucking go seek.”

“Better than run and get shot at,” Buffy counters to the rhythm of thumps and scrapes that mean they’re both working at getting hidden someplace safe. Safer. Whatever. John burns with the need to be out there, do something, get free. To not be a sitting duck, useless and easily disposed of, if things turn really ugly. 

Once the scrabbling noises stop, John exhales in relief. He knows his two favorite mad-persons are harder to take down than even Teyla, but he still worries for them. Especially since they are obviously very much not on top of their game. 

Case in point, Ronon muttering, “But you’re so good at running,” under his breath. 

Of course, Buffy, being Buffy and having freakishly good hearing, does not miss the comment. 

“Wow,” Rodney pipes up, making an impressed face, “I didn’t know Ronon’s inner fourteen-year-old girl was that much of a catty bitch.”

Teyla runs that through her Rodney-People translator and then nods. “Indeed,” she agrees. Pauses. “I thought there were twelve years old?”

Some days, John would really like to work with, you know, normal people. Sane people.

“What the frilly heck is that supposed to mean?!” Buffy’s voice is completely deadpan and very quiet. Screaming would be less terrifying. 

“Can we get out of here first?” Ronon barks. There is shouting, coming closer. 

“No! Because apparently you can’t keep your manpain bottled up long enough! I want answers, Ronon! What the hell climbed up your butt and died to turn you into the goddamn stain I’ve had to deal with for the past week!”

There is a single shout, louder than the others, and suddenly, gun fire. 

Ronon curses up a storm, movement, more bullets flying, and then a hard crack, followed by a muttered, “That’ll teach you to shoot at people having an argument.”

More noises. At a guess, Buffy knocked out the shooter, disarmed him and then passed his weapon on to Ronon who is making ample use of it by killing anything that moves with single, precise shots.

“Right or left?”

“I don’t think – shit!”

And then there’s blanket gun fire _again_ and John can feel himself getting grey hairs over this, no Wraith necessary for once. 

Running sounds and fighting sounds and knife sounds and over it all, Ronon snaps, “What do you mean, ‘manpain’. I’m not the one acting like an asshole, Slayer!”

“What?! You’re crankier than a pregnant woman and you won’t tell me why! Stop shooting at me, you inbred hick-world moron! Yes, you, with the gun! There, that’ll teach you!”

“You know why! Duck!”

“If I did, we wouldn’t – ouch, crap, take that sucker – be having this conversation!”

Thirty seconds of solid fighting noises and John is starting to wonder just how many soldiers are in this place, because he knows Buffy and Ronon’s goon-knock-out rate and they’ve got to be at least thirty down by now. ‘Conservative estimate’, as Elizabeth would say.

“You’re leaving!” Ronon finally blurts, followed by a pained grunt and something that makes Teyla blush under her tan even while the translation matrix fizzled out, scandalized. John makes a mental note to ask about it later and puts a hand on Rodney’s neck in a quiet order to calm down before he crushes the comm in his palm from second-hand anxiety.

Fist against nose, unmistakable. “I’m what?!”

“Lorne heard it from Chuck who overheard your conversation with O’Neill. He offered to bring you back to Earth! You accepted!” Running, guns, pained yelps, harsh breathing. “Where the fuck are we? And were you ever actually going to tell me?!”

“East sector, I think, how long left on the clock? And I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important! Really? This is why you’ve been so bitchy?!”

“Five minutes until the first bomb goes off. What do you mean, it’s not important? Were you just going to disappear?”

John cringes because, god, Ronon sounds _gutted_ and he knew, they all knew, that the two of them are serious, but they shouldn’t be hearing this. It’s too private. Rodney presses his back against John’s chest and Teyla shifts a half step away. All of them stare at the comm, not really wanting to hear, but unwilling to turn it off when their friends’ lives are in danger and this might be the last they ever hear of them. 

(Except not, because they don’t let themselves think like that. They don’t.)

“What? No! Left here! I told Jack that I appreciated the offer, but there was no point until you’re cleared for Earth travel after that virus you caught last month, which is going to take at least another six months. Moot point. Duh.”

More running. How much running can you do in an underground complex? And where the hell are they? And when does the rescue portion of the evenings’ entertainment start? John needs to shoot something, badly. 

Then, quietly, “You want me to come with you?”

A lock breaking, footsteps. “Well, duh. Who would I show around the place? Going alone would be boring. We should hit up Vegas and I want to show you LA. ‘Lantis says it’s almost exactly like the one I grew up in. I wanna see if my old house exists. And then buy a shitton of kitschy souvenirs for everyone. You can carry my bags. Gods, actual shopping! In stores! With, like, credit cards. I’m going to make O’Neill give me a credit card and bankrupt Uncle Sam on shoes I’ll never actually get the chance to wear.”

“Souvenirs? Right here. One minute.”

“Well, yeah. You know Rodney would never forgive us if we didn’t bring him something awesome.”

Rodney’s still muttering, “Damn right,” when Buffy concludes, “I was thinking bobble head Elvis. He’ll _hate it_.”

She sounds positively gleeful. 

Ronon doesn’t. “You want to… take me on vacation. To Earth.”

“Yep. Get that door, will you?”

A single shout, someone getting punched out, and suddenly, their voices are in stereo as Ronon says, “I thought you were leaving for good,” and Buffy counters, “That’s because you’re an idiot and also sleeping on the couch.”

She pauses long enough to close the distance to the cell door, waves at John, Rodney and Teyla through the bars and adds, “After the make-up sex.”

Then she uses some of her don’t-ask-about-them superpowers to kick in the solid steel door and motions them forward just as the first homemade explosive rocks the place. “Come on, come on, move it.”

Ronon hands John a pilfered gun, asks, “What’s that?”

“Comm,” Rodney offers. “I managed, through no little effort on my part, I’ll have you know, to establish one-way communication.”

Teyla shoves him forward and they automatically fall into sweep formation as they leave the cell block.

“To who?”

“You.”

It takes a second for that to sink in. Then Buffy blushes scarlet. John didn’t know tough warrior chicks came in that color. Didn’t expect to be overheard, which makes sense, because they must have tried to hail the three of them early on and gotten no answer, comms taken before they were thrown in the cell. 

“So you heard - ?”

“Oh, yeah,” John agrees, nodding sagely. “All of it. Sorry.”

“And you-?”

“Yep.”

Teyla takes point, shooting a goon running straight at them, and takes a sharp turn into a stairwell. Up, up, up. Right direction at least. 

“I wonder, though,” she pipes up as she sweeps a landing, “What is the meaning of this ‘sleeping on the couch’ you threatened Ronon with?”

Buffy blushes harder and shoots her boyfriend (Lover? Partner?) a look that clearly says ‘save me’. 

Ronon smirks at her, then shoots into the stairwell to scatter their pursuers and presses a brief kiss to her temple. 

She elbows him.

“Thank god,” John mutters to himself as he nudges Rodney along. There’s daylight at the top of the stairs and his team isn’t threatening civil war anymore. 

As far as he’s concerned, this day just got a whole lot better. 

+

+

**Author's Note:**

> Tumble with me at wordsformurder.


End file.
